Arizona AG Suing GM for $3 Billion Over Recalls -NYT

In the first major legal action against General Motors (GM) over its record number of recalls this year, Arizona's attorney general on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the auto maker claiming it had defrauded state consumers of an estimated $3 billion, The New York Times reported Thursday.

In its filing, the state broke from a group of 48 state attorneys general who had launched a multistate investigation into GM's decades' delay in recalling an ignition-switch defect in 2.6 million of its small cars.

"We're proceeding with our own suit because it's the best way to protect the citizens of Arizona," Attorney General Thomas C. Horne, said in an interview.

"General Motors represented that it was taking care of the safety of its cars, and in fact there were serious defects that it did not disclose to the public for years," he said.

The complaint suggested, the Times said, that GM had intentionally misled consumers in its advertising, website and public statements and that some of its top executives were complicit in the alleged misdeeds.

The complaint included precise calculations of losses suffered by owners of G.M. cars and said "no reasonable consumer" would now buy a GM vehicle for the same price had "the brand continued to mean safety and success," the report said.

Full story at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/20/business/arizona-sues-gm-for-3-billion-over-recalls.html?_r=0

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